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Monday, July 14, 2025

Fired CEPEP contractor tells Govt rescind dismissals or face legal action

by

10 days ago
20250704
CEPEP head office in Ste Madeleine

CEPEP head office in Ste Madeleine

Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

At least one dis­missed Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) con­trac­tor has threat­ened to sue the com­pa­ny for wrong­ful ter­mi­na­tion.

Stephen Samuel’s Con­trac­tors Ltd, rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, St Clair O’Neil and Ka­reem Mar­celle, ad­dressed their pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to CEPEP CEO Kei­th Ed­dy.

At­tempts to con­tact Ed­dy for com­ment yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.

The let­ter came a day af­ter the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment said it will take the Gov­ern­ment to court over the dis­missals of not just CEPEP con­trac­tors and their em­ploy­ees, but near­ly 20,000 em­ploy­ees who were fired by the State.

In their let­ter, Lal­la and the oth­er at­tor­neys claimed their client’s ter­mi­na­tion was in breach of an agree­ment. The let­ter ex­plained that their client’s con­trac­tu­al arrange­ment was due to end in No­vem­ber 2029 and as per the con­tract, any ter­mi­na­tion de­mand­ed a 30-day no­tice or a pay­ment in lieu of no­tice, which was not done as the ter­mi­na­tion was with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

The let­ter added that the ter­mi­na­tion is in breach of the com­pa­ny’s ethos.

“The abrupt pur­port­ed ter­mi­na­tion of the con­tract, along with oth­ers, will se­vere­ly im­pact thou­sands of peo­ple, in­clud­ing vul­ner­a­ble work­ers and their fam­i­lies, who have lost ac­crued ben­e­fits with­out no­tice. This breach di­rect­ly con­tra­dicts your com­pa­ny’s stat­ed goals of ex­pand­ing em­ploy­ment and sup­port­ing small busi­ness­es, po­ten­tial­ly un­der­min­ing its mis­sion to build com­mu­ni­ties. The claimant ar­gued the de­fen­dant’s ac­tions are un­law­ful and against pub­lic pol­i­cy.”

On Wednes­day, Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at Bal­isi­er House in Port-of-Spain, promised le­gal sup­port for the 19,810 peo­ple pur­port­ed­ly fired since the gov­ern­ment changed. They added that the dis­missal of CEPEP work­ers and from oth­er State agen­cies was “vin­dic­tive and wicked.”

The pre-ac­tion let­ter added: “As a re­sult of the ac­tions of you and your com­pa­ny, our client and the af­fect­ed work­ers have, and con­tin­ue to suf­fer loss and dam­age. More­so, as a di­rect and fore­see­able con­se­quence of your com­pa­ny’s breach, our client and, by ex­ten­sion, the af­fect­ed work­ers have suf­fered and con­tin­ue to suf­fer loss and dam­age, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to loss of in­come and prof­its from the pur­port­ed ter­mi­nat­ed con­tract. Sig­nif­i­cant stress and anx­i­ety stem­ming from the sud­den in­abil­i­ty to meet on­go­ing fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions, in­clud­ing those re­lat­ed to the care and well-be­ing of their chil­dren and the ir­repara­ble loss of long-stand­ing pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ships and the dis­rup­tion of a sup­port­ive work­ing en­vi­ron­ment built over years with ded­i­cat­ed em­ploy­ees.”

The at­tor­neys said if the ter­mi­na­tion let­ter was not re­scind­ed by the end of the work­day yes­ter­day, they will im­me­di­ate­ly ini­ti­ate a claim in the High Court for breach of con­tract and file for in­junc­tive re­lief.

On Wednes­day, hun­dreds of for­mer CEPEP work­ers protest­ed out­side the com­pa­ny’s head of­fice in Ste Madeleine, call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to com­plete the au­dit in­to the com­pa­ny quick­ly and re­hire them.

On Tues­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said the con­trac­tors would be paid “in lieu of no­tice” of the ter­mi­na­tion and it was ex­pect­ed that they would pay their work­ers a month’s salary to cov­er Ju­ly.

On June 27, over 300 CEPEP con­trac­tors were giv­en ter­mi­na­tion let­ters, which ef­fec­tive­ly left an es­ti­mat­ed 10,500 work­ers on the bread­line.


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